Saturday, June 12, 2010

Three days after the spill, the Dutch government offered oil skimming ships and booms to assist with the clean up. The Obama administration turned down the request. President Obama's stumbling response to this ecological disaster has been shameful and proves he lacks the executive experience to be President. In late May, President Obama said,

"Those who think we were either slow on the response or lacked urgency, don't know the facts..."

Three days after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch government offered to help.

It was willing to provide ships outfitted with oil-skimming booms, and it proposed a plan...

The response from the Obama administration and BP, which are coordinating the cleanup: “The embassy got a nice letter from the administration that said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’” said Geert Visser, consul general for the Netherlands in Houston....

4
comments:

Anonymous
said...

Three days after the explosion they didn't think there was a spill. Then it was 1000 barrels a day, revised a week later to 5000 barrels. No one knew at the time what a huge clusterf**k this would become. "But he should have...(fill in your criticism here)" is either childish or intentionally political. At the time all those spill amounts were easily within the capabilities of US resources. The headline, "Obama turned down..." is politically charged but not informative.

Has the response been perfect? By no means. But in the real world of moving targets and unintended consequences it's hard to be perfect, especially to a crowd looking for any mistake they can capitalize on.

"Anonymous" is missing the point. Moving targets are a way of life and the administration's inability to plan for unintended but foreseable consequences has definitely shown itself to be a pattern.

Does anyone really think an oil rig in the middle of the Gulf can explode and there not be some sort of oil spill? When I saw the first headline flash on the screen I thought, "This is going to be bad..."

I agree, VJ Brandon Gray. Hope for the best but plan for the worst. That should always be presidential policy.

Did Obama have any valid reason to turn down foreign help? That's the real question. If it could only help--and not hurt--it doesn't matter how small a blip on the radar the spill seemed to be. You should play it safe.

Is it possible that Obama has turned down foreign help because he wants to be the hero to fix this problem? Is he fishing for a boost in his approval rating and overall public reception? It is pure speculation, but it seems realistic, unfortunately. It wouldn't be the first time that a president--or any political figure--sought to secure his own position before that of the nation. (Such as Truman helping France with Vietnam after China went red, mostly out of the fear of looking like a Democrat "soft" on Communism.)